Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Sunday January 08, 2006 @11:20AM
from the because-you-can dept.

John H. Doe writes "This student was bored one day, so he decided to see what the world looked like from the bottom of his optical mouse. He jury rigged a few wires to his parallel port and wrote a program to take a look. And seeing as how one thing a mouse does is to detect motion, made it into a ghetto b&w handscanner. "

Pretty cool, wish it could of had better results, image is crap and doesnt even look like there is anywhere you can go to make a cheapscanner from a $15 optical mouse, but interesting hack, might try it myself over the summer.

doesnt even look like there is anywhere you can go to make a cheapscanner

Dunno, improving the software to match up successive images better should be prefectly possible, it's hard to say exactly how good a result could be achieved, but I'd say a lot better than the posted image. You could also hack in multiple coloured LEDs, and thus possibly make a colour scanner. Probably never actually be useful though, hard to say.

I have a canon scanner which uses LIDE (LED Indirect Exposure) technology to do the scanner rather than the older style light bulb. You can't actually see the LEDs, it uses a lot of really small ones, but I think it has R, G, and B LEDs. I think he is just applying the same technology, only without as many lights, and with not as much precision.

You too huh? I thought something was wrong with my browser. The text got warped under his pictures... and too think this guy can make a scanner from a mouse but can't make a normal web page is sweet irony.

And "too think" that someone can criticize the web page of an amazing hack but can neither spell nor tell the difference between the bottom of a screenshot and magically "warped" text is not sweet irony. It's par for the Slashdot course.

Yeah...this low tech thing also reminds me of someone trying to use a sound card as an oscilloscope (through the mic)...or how someone used the sensor on a logitech trackball device to track how a fly walks (the fly walks on a light ball colored in such a way that the sensor could still read it).

Low tech? You're using an 18x18 pixel video camera that takes over a thousand snapshots a second of the shadows of your desk, then uses a DSP to calculate the differences between those images and thus how far and in what direction the mouse has moved, and you call it LOW TECH?!!

At least this hack is a little funny. I have been wondering about a mouse with force-feedback and then I can't wait until I see the mouse wander over the edge of the table when infected by some strange virus...

What resolution is it possible to get with the laser mice that you can get?

One might be able to deconvolute (anti-anti-alias, so to say) the picture from the sensor, but I would imagine that to achieve a stable 800 DPI resolution, one would actually need a sensor with a comparable, or better, sensor... unless the 800 DPI figure is a VaporNumber (TM).

Actually, that's what the sensor+optics is. The mouse is likely to report movement by one pixel reliably, unless it does some good sub-pixel image comparison (which isn't impossible...).

Thing is you can get about any DPI you desire (up to the limit of light wave length) from such a rig by replacing the optics. You're still stuck with readout area of some 16x16 pixels though, so lower resolution = better, meaning less waving your hand to "wipe" whole area of the document.

Most optical mice have a chipset from agilent (look for the * logo on the bottom). It was originally designed for a portable scanner, HP Capshare, that had battery+scanner+IR link on it.

The trick in the box is stiching software; you would scan back and forth, turning it on a page without lifting it, and the firmware would work out what the content was. Like optical mice, it doesnt work on shiny pages.

The product crashed and burned, but at least the silicion could be turned into mouse silicon instead, and in the process actually increasing the selling price of a mouse. Who wants a no-good ball mouse, the junk you get bundled with a PC?

I still have a capshare scanner; its actually quite useful for discreetly scanning bits of books at the local university.I have an inherited

Only a little one, that issues degrees and doctorates by email. you may have got some of our adverts in your inbox.

We specialise in a limited number of courses-nigerian banking-0EM software-Phishing; basic and advanced.

The Phishing course is becoming more popular, as we actually offer a discount on the degree if you successfully collect the SSNs and banking details of a thousand new individuals. You may also be interested in a doctorate, though as PhDs require

Or turn a camera-equipped mobile phone into an optical mouse? Preferrably with bluetooth support using the built-in phone BT chip! It should only be some programming to get it to work, right? Finally a sensible use for cameraphones.

Yes it is, almost all cellphones grant access to the camera via the Java api, but bluetooth is abit morestateof the art it accsesible on most good phones these days (such as k750). The problem is that Micro java is really shutdown on most phones and requires user acknowledgement each time it want to acces he camera.

A bar code reader also stuck me as a useful modification.
I wrote C code for interpreting the pulse from a bar code pen/wand
as part of a project the last year of my engineering education,
and replacing the pen with an optical mouse will
more or less give an identical project, so this should by all means doable.

Because of that I did learn a bit about the different types of bar codes.
This was in 1995 so the following is just based on memory, I might have some minor errors in
the following.
The bar code

It's probably the moral implications of the question being asked. If you can remote control a frog (or a cockroach [wireheading.com]), it won't be long before someone can remote control a human. I noticed that a lot of science instructors are incapable or unwilling to discuss how science can be used for both good and evil.

Jury Rig is also correct. I have heard the Yanks say it before. I never made the connection to WWII but I suspect this might be true. Jerry Rig and Jury Rig sound so similar that the British accent to American accent translation probably has something to do with it too.

... is from Agilent Technologies (which just spun off its semiconductor business). For 65-years Agilent was also known was "Hewlett-Packard." In late 1999, HP spun everything but computers and prnters off into Agilent. (This past Dec 1, Agilent's semiconductors became Avago.)

With a bi more tweaking to the code, the mouse could possibly be made into a linear, perhaps even 2D:-)) barcode scanner. Barcode scanners can be expensive. Optical mice don't come cheap, but cost significantly less than a barcode scanner, could this be the next generation of the CueCat, made at home? Also, your killing two birds with one stone, as it's multifunctional. Mind you, it still isn't as good as that MP3 playing toothbrush I got for Christmas:-))

When I first saw this I thought it would be useful to turn the mouse into a barcode reader. A quick look at prices shows them starting at around forty bucks. If this could be made to work roughly as well as the barcode readers it might be pretty useful.

When I first saw this I thought it would be useful to turn the mouse into a barcode reader.

I think you'd have to do a lot of image correction in software in order to get something stable enough for that. In his example app, there's way too much alignment error between samples.

Also, one of the reasons regular barcode scanners are a bit more expensive is that they use a laser with a motorized mirror (or something along those lines) so that you can do the scanning from a distance and the beam scans the barcode

I seem to recall that something similar was done with that unmitigating disaster known as cue cat:-)
Y'know - I don't really care how crap the images are - the point of this execise is all about
hacking because it's there. I think this is pretty cool. Would I every replicate this hack or have value
for it? -- probably not. But it's cool just for coolness sake. And one never knows when a cool hack will be
something you would use (if not today, maybe tomorrow...)

Its a shame really. Hand scanners seemed to ahve peaked in popularity before their time. I understand that they were popular because they were a lot cheaper to build that flatbeds, and as flatbeds came down in price, the hand scanners died away. Seems perfectly reasonable since the handscanner was a pretty ppor match for a desktop computer anyway. The only problem with this was that as the price of flatbeds fell, so did the price of laptops, now a lot of folks have laptops, and hand scanners would be perfect to throw in the laptop bag.... If you are in a library or somehwhere and need a quick scan, the hand scanner would have been perfect. But I have not been able to find a single color hand scanner that will run with XP, which is what I run on my laptop. If I could find one, I'd buy it in a heartbeat. The last time I needed a scan of something when I was not at home, I ended up puling out my digital camera (which I had with me for another reason, and snapping a picture. This was not the ideal situation, but it worked for what I needed. How often do you have a good digital camera with you (not the crappy one in your cell phone)

Does anyone know of a handscanner compatible with XP? I'd still like to have one.

Absolutely, works fine, even with my 3.0MP P&S camera, so it dosen't require anything fancy. 10pt and up seriff fonts are no problem, though if there was very small text, it might not get that. I need to test it some more. The single most important thing is good light for good contrast, even better if the light isn't aligned very close to the len's axis. Flash tends to wash it out.

Handscanners had LOTS of disadvantages compared to flatbeds. Poor resolution resulting from uneven movement speed (flatbed can go as slow as you desire. User moves the handscanner slightly faster and data gets lost.), small width - need for "stitching", poor absolute distance/shape quality (turn it a little, let it slide a bit etc), poor tollerance for uneven surfaces (try to scan a page in a thick book, the roll of the scanner falls off the book when the scanning element is still 5cm into the text) and quite a few other serious disadvantages. The guy advising you a camera is right. I have a Logitech handscanner and a cheap Canon camera, and the camera produces better images than the scanner. Not to mention it's vastly faster:) In great most cases camera suffices. Only if you need -huge- image in good resolution (I mean like 10000x10000px) the scanner makes sense, but you rarely do. And definitely not with a laptop, on a travel.One more handy thing. You won't scan a 2mx3m train schedule hanging on the wall, no matter if you use handscanner or a flatbed. Camera is just right for that.

If you are genuinely asking what the speed of sound in a vacuum is, you need a quick physics lesson. By definition, there can be no sound in a vacuum; sound needs a medium to travel in, since it is nothing more that propagating pressure waves. Light on the other hand can travel through a vacuum because of the particle-wave duality.

I'm not sure I understand your signature. If taken at face value, your quote indicates that you believe that it is possible to possess everything there is, everywhere. If you genuinely believe that, you need a looong physics lesson.

If you are merely making a veiled criticism of greed and various similar themes as portrayed in movies and television shows, then it's really not very clear.

It's just a little mean question with a built-in fallacy, tickle your brain, "ouch, it won't work". Just like these 0=1 proofs, just physics-based. The first case I thought of it was at the time of the article about the Voyager probe crossing the border where solar wind slows down below the speed of sound... speed of sound in what?!

OK, cool. Thanks for clarifying that.Yeah, I really don't put much stock in the types of comparisons the general newsmedia uses when they talk about scientific subjects. The one that sticks out in my mind was when the shuttle Columbia exploded, and CNN was scrambling to get information in the bottom screen-scroller. They were in such a rush that all kinds of incorrect things were shown, like "shuttle was traveling at mock 25" and "shuttle was traveling 25 times the speed of light". It would have been funny

I don't ever remember hand scanners ever being a more cost efficient solution. I bought my first flatbed scanner in '95 for just over $100. My assumption had always been that hand scanners died out because they were unweildy half-assed solutions.

I don't ever remember hand scanners ever being a more cost efficient solution. I bought my first flatbed scanner in '95 for just over $100. My assumption had always been that hand scanners died out because they were unweildy half-assed solutions.

You don't remember, because 95 is too recent:). I bought my first flatbed 1-2 years after you for $60. IIRC, when I started high school (91-92?), flatbed scanners were $300 and hand scanners were $50-75 or so. Those numbers are only from memory, and are prob

I remember having one of the logitech ones - 24 bit color 300dpi and it was motorized so you did not have to worry about moving the things at the right speed. I bought it for $125. I also had a flatbed at work that cost $500. (this was '87or so)That is the kind of scanner I would like to have right now, something that I can throw in the laptop case, scan a 4x6 image reasonably fast. Does not have to have the same quality as my flatbed. I could use my camera but I do not carry my camera everywhere I go, it i

Liar. If you really did, you'd be capping his ass instead of posting a rebuttal. Although, come to think of it, that would make for a pretty awesome version of Slashdot. "Slashback: North-North Soldier writes to tell us that CNN has photos of the carnage that arose when i_want_you_to_throw threw down on John H. Doe earlier this week..."

This is a million times cooler than the guy who claimed to have played sound from a scanned images of a phonograph record. I wonder how good an image you could get with a Mindstorms machine to move the mouse back and forth? [don't look at me, I have enough unfinished projects]